Catholics offer new nationwide diocese to Anglicans

[demosincebirth]

Opening its doors more widely to disaffected Episcopalians, the Roman Catholic Church has established the equivalent of a new, nationwide diocese in the United States that former Episcopal priests and congregations can enter together as intact groups, the Vatican announced Sunday.

Converts who join the new entity will be full-fledged Catholics, expected to show allegiance to the pope and to oppose contraception and abortion, but they will be allowed to preserve revered verses from the Book of Common Prayer. And, in what one Catholic leader called "an act of generosity," priests who are married will be exempted from the Catholic requirement of celibacy, although they may not become bishops.

The new grouping, called the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, will have its headquarters in Houston and be led by Jeffrey Steenson, a former Episcopal bishop and father of three who left the church in 2007 and became a Catholic priest in 2009, under an existing exemption for converting Anglicans.

With the title of ordinary, Steenson will be a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and will report directly to the Vatican, church officials said.


http://www.startribune.com/local/136513893.html



I posted this here instead of in the Religion and Theology forum for obvious reasons. Here we can discuss this without hate against Catholics interring into it.

[Kingofalldems]

1. The Church should just go the way of the Anglicans

and the Orthodox church re priests marrying. BTW, an Anglican church in PG County Md. has it's entire parish moving over to Catholicism.

[demosincebirth]

2. Catholic church is 2000 years old. I don't agree with all it's teachings, but I'll never

leave it.

[Kingofalldems]

3. I meant the Church should change it's celibacy rules

to be more like the Orthodox.

[tjwmason]

5. This might be a significant step in that direction.

I seriously doubt that the Church will allow Priests to marry, but it has now been expanding its cadre of Priests who were married before Ordination. Here in England there has been a large flood of these in recent years, with many more in our equivalent to this new American Ordinariate...as parishoners get used to these pressure will grow, and fears about their effect will diminish.

[demosincebirth]

6. Change in the church comes slowly...takes decades and decades, sometimes even centuries. This

may be, some what of a kick-start for this progress, I hope.

[Angry Dragon]

4. 'expected to show allegiance to the pope'

And here I thought religion was about god
silly me...........

[Matilda]

7. There are two things that bother me about this.

One is that, at least among Anglicans, is that many who leave their church do so in protest against the ordination of women that is accepted in all but the most hardline Anglican tradition. Do we really need to bring more narrow-minded, bigoted anti-feminists into the Church of Rome?

The other is the sheer hypocrisy of it - either married men are suitable for the priesthood, or they're not. It's unfair and ridiculous to say it's okay from some but not others. Either don't accept married Anglican/Episcopalians into the priesthood, or allow marriage for all priests (which is by far the most sensible thing, IMO).

And in light of this article, I think it's high time Rome admitted that, while celibacy might be a worthy ideal, in practice it's too often a failure.

Bishop resigns after disclosing he is father of two children:

http://ncronline.org/news/people/bishop-resigns-after-disclosing-he-father-two-children

[demosincebirth]

8. What I really think, here in the U.S. what kicked off the exodus to Cahtolicism is the ordination

of Gay married Bishops. As I recall there was big uproar when the first Gay Bishop ( I can't recall his name) was installed and I believe that started the ground swell of protests.

Celibacy was great for the middle ages when the age of exploration by Portugal and Spain spread the Catholic faith world wide. If priest were married then, with families, who knows what faith Mexico, Central and South America would be this day.